Woven in the Silver Strands
by emeralddarkness
Summary: Some are merely tangled, but some are woven into the silver strands of fate....
1. Chapter One: Change is Rather a Nuisance

Woven in the Silver Strands  
emeralddarkness

**Rating: PG-13/T (Rated for angst and some awfully strange stuff. Not sex. None.)**

Right then. Hello, everyone! I hope that you like this strange little plot bunny–it just came hopping along, and I had to write it. I have a disclaimer roughly the size of Europe for this fic, but it was necessary–so if you see something that you recognize, please check there before all other considerations. One final note, Kagome is (yes) slightly OOC in this fic–she's too angsty, really, but it could happen in this time frame–and there are other aspects of the story that are slightly... off. I do these things on purpose, so unless you see something that seems just _way_ out there (in which case it might be a mistake on my part) please don't comment. I all ready know.

**Disclaimer: **No, I do not own the _InuYasha_ series or any character, scene, or conflict affiliated with that series that is alluded to in this story. Those all belong to Rumiko Takahashi and always will unless she goes suddenly and unexpectedly insane one day and auctions them off or something. _ALSO, _I borrowed some from Amelia Atwater Rhodes's _Kiesha'Ra_ series so far as the feathers-in-the-hair goes, and I took "Winged like the Emerald" from _Wizards at War_ by Diane Duane. ("Guardian of the Divided Soul" was inspired by "Guardian of the Divided Name," also from this book). "The Night One" came from Tamora Pierce's _Alanna, the First Adventure._ So, if you recognize these, I AM SO NOT TAKING CREDIT FOR THEM!They are not mine, I do not claim them as such, and I am making no profit off of them. _Swan Lake_, written by Tchaikovsky (no, NOT _The Swan Princess,_ though that was inspired by it), which I also mention, doesn't belong to me either. And no, sadly, I do not own any of the four elements (just think how cool that would be!) Actually, I own basically nothing. Excuse me while I go off into my corner and cry.

(A/N: Holy cow, that was long. I will add further disclaimers when and if the need appears.)

**Chapter One: Change is Rather a Nuisance  
**_**Kagome**_

I felt the tears start to slide down my cheek, and had to bite my tongue to keep from swearing.

_Stupid, idiotic, unfeeling, cold, tactless, chauvinistic, hard-hearted..._

It was no good. I was crying. _Crying!_ Of all the unreasonable actions that I could have picked, this had to be the worst. I didn't even really have anything to cry _about!_ After all, I had known all along that Inuyasha liked Kikyo–that he had probably liked her better then he liked me! So what was I crying for? He'd made his choice! It wasn't me.

_So why couldn't I stop crying, already?_

"Kagome!" I heard him call from behind me, but I just started running faster and crying harder and cursing myself for it even more.

I should be _happy!_ Naraku was finally defeated (I think. I hope, anyway–I don't think that he got away from the last battle, but given his history and the fact that we didn't find a body I guess we can't rule out the possibility that he got away somehow) and the jewel was finished. Inuyasha had actually stopped bugging me about said jewel as well, maybe that had something to do with Kikyo.

She had been in the final battle as well, and she had torn the chunk of the jewel that I had scraped together from me _again_. Now that made me mad, mainly because I thought of this as proof that she really was on Naraku's side. And maybe she was, I don't know. What I do know is that when she grabbed the jewel, something happened. She was still touching me at the time, and I was still hanging on to the jewel (I wasn't going to lose it again _that_ easily, let me tell you) maybe that was it. But anyway, the jewel darkened and then purified and then was corrupted and purified again and again and the power kept on flowing out of me, keeping the bauble clean and sparkling until I thought that it had been years of doing nothing but that and I was stuck here and I would go mad soon...

It turned out slightly differently. What the jewel, through me, had been doing, was pulling the darkness out of her heart and purifying it, more and more and more evil and hatred until I thought that I would scream, that I would faint, that I would die... Because it hurt. Basically there was literally pure evil flowing into me, and not just a little bit. This was an ocean wave breaking over me with the force of a tsunami, the darkness clutching at me like a shadow determined to drown a spark that still hung on...

And then it was over. She collapsed, I collapsed and the world started to go dark and I couldn't move. I wondered if I was dying. I felt the jewel sitting in my palm, finally completed. The last few shards, all that there remained, had flown towards me it seemed on wings of lightning when the jewel was slamming from one end of the spectrum to the other so violently. Maybe that's what called them. In any case, it was done... This little, pink, beautiful thing had caused so much harm in such a short span of time...

In the space somewhere between reality and fantasy, wakefulness and dreams, I heard Inuyasha scream someone's name...

And it had been Kikyo's, I learned when I woke up. He knew that I had fallen too, but apparently that wasn't as important to him as Kikyo.

When I found this out, all of a sudden I felt empty inside, like someone had just reached into me and scooped out _everything._ Cold, I suppose, is the best way to describe it. I felt very... very cold. Calmly I stood and began walking towards the well. My friends were scared of me in that moment, I could tell.

Well, I'm sorry, I suppose, but I don't know what came over me. It was like I was seeing the world through a shell, a darkened lens that somehow removed everything from me a few steps. Like I wasn't quite part of the world anymore, like I was something else altogether. Inuyasha had run up to me a few steps outside the hut–he hadn't been inside, he had probably been out there in the woods somewhere with his precious _Kikyo–_and very calmly I told him to sit. However, that familiar crash of him hitting the forest floor seemed to tear something that suddenly seemed fragile and breakable, and all of a sudden all of the anger and pain that the bubble must have been keeping back flooded in, filling me up again and spilling out and somehow still leaving me feeling empty.

How is that? How is it that you can be filled with hate, and still so empty?

I had turned around and screamed all of my feelings at Inuyasha, telling him all of the hateful things that had come pouring into my heart. Why always _Kikyo?_ Why never _me?_ I'd been faithful, more then faithful! I'd stayed by his side for so many years–almost five years, at this point. I'd lived with and hunted with and laughed with and played with and _fallen in love_ with this idiotic mutt that couldn't get over his dead girlfriend for long enough to give me a chance to tell him that I loved him, that maybe I always have...

All of my hurt and pain and anger and anguish and years of tortured knowing that he never returned my feelings that I had bottled up for so long seemed forever came spilling out. Well, not all of them I suppose, because I knew that I was going to start crying. Actually, I only went on for a few moments before I was reduced to a broken whisper, asking why it was always her and never me. This is when I had turned and run, because I knew that the tears would start flowing in approximately thirty seconds.

I had given up so much, _so freakin' much,_ to keep on coming back here! I'd barely graduated from High School, basically all of my future prospects in _my own time period_ were toast, and I didn't know what I could do. I was nineteen and I had basically no friends but the shard hunting crew, I barely saw my family, and I had never been kissed. At nineteen. Even the faithful Hojo had moved on to greener pastures, as it were. No one would want an almost High School dropout with shocking health problems and a possible record of delinquency. Or, I guess there were a few types who would like that, but I wanted nothing to do with any of them.

I had literally given up almost everything that I had ever known and loved, all so that I could come back here to this _stupid_ era and spend the time with the boy that I loved. And yet, when I fell as though dead, Inuyasha didn't even think of me, only of Kikyo.

I was only a shard detector. That's all that I ever had been. I wouldn't ever have even been that, but the all precious Kikyo was too homicidal to keep her around to fill the post.

I'd only ever been her replacement.

"Kagome!" I heard Inuyasha cry, and there seemed to be a kind of pain in his voice. He would chase me to the ends of the earth and beyond if I didn't let him say whatever it was that he wanted to say, I knew from experience, so I stopped.

"What is it?" I asked in a voice harsh as a crow as I swung around to face him. My tongue felt thick and unwieldy and it seemed to flop like a dying fish in my mouth, rather than how tongues are properly supposed to work. "Why aren't you back with _her?_" Inuyasha laughed, but once again there was pain in it. I didn't let him speak, however. "Oh, wait, you want the jewel, don't you? Well you can't have it! I'd sooner smash it again then let you have it! You'd only wish to be a full demon, wouldn't you? That would splinter it anyway, and each and every one of those tiny splinters would be corrupted! I'd never let that happen, do you hear? _I'd never let that happen!_" I was half shouting by the end, a hoarse and broken sound. It was rough. It was nothing like my normal voice. It was like grief had cracked and reformed my voice, and made it into a different shape altogether.

"Kagome, please, just–"

I hated that tiny, glittering, beautiful pink ball right then. It brought nothing but misery. I wished that I could destroy it, that I could somehow shatter not only the physical but the holier aspects of it to keep it from ever being used for such evil as it had been used for again...

The jewel was in pain when it was corrupted, and that pain reverberated through my very bones whenever I purified a shard, the tiniest splinter. It had shrieked in agony when used in curses, and I could feel that ricocheting through me. It seemed to tear the muscle and bone, at the beginning I'd always been mildly surprised that I wasn't ever standing in a pool of blood at the end of it.

The Shikon no Tama, which was supposed to be so wonderful and good, brought nothing but pain in practice. There was no luck in it, no luck at all. In fact, rather the opposite of luck seemed to trail it. _Grandpa, I wouldn't wish this curse on my worst enemies, and you **sell** replicas..._

The famous Jewel of the Four Souls, which I held tightly enough that the chain left angry indents on my hands, had not brought any of the wonderful things that it was supposed to. It had caused unmeasured wars and death and pain and grief and pure misery from poor, simple people who were only trying to live free and bring in the next crop, but it had never once brought peace or hope or love...

"Kagome–" Inuyasha started again, his voice pained and pleading.

I wouldn't stay, couldn't stay. The tears, which I had tried so hard to hold back, were now beginning to flow thick and fast down my cheeks, and I had screamed at him to leave me alone, my voice cracking as I did so, and then turned and jumped down the well.

Normally I am slightly apprehensive when I take the plunge, even though I've done it what seems thousands of times. After all, for all that you know what will happen and you know where it's taking you, there are always the lingering doubts. _What if it doesn't work this time? What if it does, but I end up in the wrong time period or place and I'm trapped there forever..._

A bit stupid, I know, but I still have these little nagging doubts. And completely removed from all of that–it is a bit creepy to watch yourself slip through solid ground and have that ground catch at you like cobwebs, only a light brushing as you break through that seems to tickle and stick to your skin. When ground, after all, stops behaving like ground, it makes you nervous.

Anyway, although I normally hesitate for a second, at least, this time I positively threw myself down the well, trying to drown myself in the warm light in the place between the worlds. It brought me a moment of peace, at least. Being down there always calms me down. It feels like you're floating as you fall so quickly that you know you are going faster then anything ever has before, including light... But even as you fall, you still float, like a dust mote. The best way to describe it is how Alice felt falling down the Rabbit Hole. How she didn't exactly know how fast she was going, as it seemed both very fast and very slow at the same time.

As soon as I got back to my own era, I fled that well and then the well house as though the Hounds of Hell were about to come pouring after me out of it. I made it exactly as far as the God Tree, and then I collapsed at the base of Goshinboku and cried and cried and cried, until a chill wind took the ash that had once been my heart and scattered it to the four winds.

- - -

Mama must have been out shopping when I got home, and Souta was probably at Soccer practice or something, while Grandpa took a nap. Not necessarily those tasks, I suppose, but everyone must have been engaged in something. I know that Mama, at least, checks whenever it sounds like I'm home, and I'd defiantly made some noise in my rather dramatic entrance. Anyway, despite all of the clanging, sobbing, running, et cetera, no one even seemed to notice that I was home. And so, of course, I had a good long time to cry and then another good long time to sit around feeling utterly empty and miserable and as though the world could just go and kick off somewhere, as much as I cared, because _I was not doing any more to save it anymore._ No sirree, sorry Earth, but you're going to have to find another poor shmuck to go and do all of this rescuing business, because I QUIT!

I was also feeling rather unreasonable at that point, no doubt driven to the point of near delirium by too much crying and time spent in the cold. (It was Feburary, and just after the 14th, which I considered another of the universes's most cruel bits of irony, which it always seems to reserve for me).

Still no one had come for me after what had to be at least an hour, and so I finally got up and began trudging my way on to the house. Although, I reasoned, the temperature outside fit my bleak mood better then central heating would, it wouldn't prove anything if I was to get hypothermia. Though, if I'd known what was coming, I suppose that I would just have drowned myself in the koi pond and gotten it over with quick. I mean, the jewel was done and I was supposed to be able to _rest_ a bit. I don't ask much, but I do ask this. And yet the universe doesn't see fit even to grant this tiny wish.

Sigh.

Still, I'd gone inside and then, about a foot inside the door, I'd turned around and frozen (in the stopped dead sense, not the cold sense). Because there, in the very first room that you walk into, the reception room for the shrine, there had been sitting on the table in a special little display rack what I do declare solemnly to be the most beautiful thing I'd ever set eyes on.

It was a sword.

Funny, how those things keep on getting tied up into my life, isn't it? It was a katana, a bit shorter then most of the ones that I'd seen back in the Sengoku Jidai, but still a perfectly serviceable length. And swords (at least in Western mythology) were traditionally the symbol of air. This one looked it.

It looked like the handle was carved of white ivory, with inlays of some kind of stone that was the palest blue. I have no idea what that stone was, but the effect was mesmerizing. It somehow _looked_ light, like it could start floating, and the designs looked like the could almost move, like there were real clouds and breezes that had been trapped in the cold, beautiful blade's grip. The guard at the end of the grip, that separates it from the blade proper, was the solid blue stone. An inch of the best blue tempered steel showed where it had been partially pulled from its sheath. Things seemed to dance in that steel, like ghosts that haunted the metal and shimmered across it.

And speaking of such things, the sheath was a match for the rest of it–it was utterly mesmerizing.

Normally cases are serviceable, as are handles, and have little or no decoration, but this sword proved that this was not an inviolable rule. The sheath was not ivory, as was the grip, but the blue stone used for inlays. Ivory had been used for inlays here, and yet somehow it seemed natural. Like the blue and the white had faded and mingled, not just been shorn off and glued together.

The same thing happened with the green and black at the bottom.

About halfway down the case, the blue began to have strips of a smoky green that snaked upwards through it like tendrils of mist, somehow blending perfectly. The same thing happened at the bottom, only it was black like ebony–almost more of a rich brown then true black. It was tied together by a cap of ebony on the top of the handle and a cap of ivory on the bottom of the sheath. And somehow it seemed to be in perfect balance, harmonious in opposites.

I felt my breath catch as I looked at it, mesmerized in a way. It was the most singular and the most beautiful weapon that I'd ever seen, and something about it seemed to call to me. I had to go and look at it a bit more closely. Grandpa, after all, had never minded _me_ touching any of his antiques, not since just before I turned 15 and grandpa gave me long, extensive lessons on how to handle antiques (these were brought on by the kappa hand incident). Any visitors and Souta he minded quite a bit, but never _me..._

I would be careful. I just had to see it, that was all. See it and touch it and feel the singular, slick sensation of perfection in the form of a blade sliding out of it's sheath...

It felt, as I stepped closer and closer to the sword, as if nothing but myself and the object that I was fixed on existed. It wasn't as if I were in a vampire movie and hypnotized or anything like that, but my vision seemed to narrow and me ears seemed to buzz. There was a thrumming, like my heartbeat, that pounded with regularity against my skull. So, basically, it was rather creepy. I mean, there didn't seem to be anything wrong, but when your vision narrows then I think that it's time to see a doctor, don't you?

Nothing _seemed_ like it was wrong to _me_ at the time though. After all, my vision wasn't narrowing, not really (I could, after all, see other things, I was just focused on the sword) and as to the thrumming and buzzing... it happens sometime when it's really quiet. And the sword just seemed so darn interesting that I had to examine it more closely!

My sense of curiosity will be the death of me yet.

Anyway, I made it over to the low table that the thing was set on and settled myself into a plush cushion before settling in to examine it more closely. It was even prettier up close. Humming in pleasure as I reached out to brush my fingers against the amazing weapon, I heard someone come down the stairs.

Grandpa, I supposed.

I sighed mentally. I guess that I couldn't have the in-depth examination that I had so yearned for. Ah well. Salvage what there was, I suppose. I wanted to look a bit at the blade, to see if it still looked like there was something beneath the surface of the steel. It looked half like it was wind, if you could see wind. With the occasional leaf in it. Funny, even closer it looked like something was flashing just below the skin of the steel. This should have been a clue for me to run like... like Sesshoumaru was looking downright mad at me, but I've never been what most people would class "smart." After all, look at Inuyasha. Look at all I'd done for him without a scrap of gratitude in return.

Even so, I should have guessed that there was _something_ unnatural at work. After all, steel didn't normally look alive.

I told you I was slow. Really slow. At times I remind myself of a snail cryogenically frozen in a mixture of tar and molasses.

Sigh.

"Hey," I'd said, reaching out to brush a finger along the scant bit of exposed steel before I turned around to smile at whoever it was coming down. All right, so I was sad, that didn't mean that I had to be all psycho and throw myself at the first person I saw, crying and snorting like some sort of strange, wet, weepy monster from the abyss. At least, not unless that person was mama. I could _act_ relatively normal, for a while at least.

Or, that was the plan. It didn't really work that way, to my chagrin. What really happened was, when my outstretched index finger was about a millimeter away from the metal, I heard Grandpa (_Aha,_ I'd thought, _so I was right!_) start saying, "Wait, Kagome!"

He never even got to finish his sentence. At least, not that I heard. He only got to the "go" bit of my name before I passed out as my finger brushed the surface.

Now, let me just point out that this is NOT FAIR. I mean, Sleeping Beauty had the same sort of thing happen, but at least the loving King and Queen didn't _display the freakin' spindles!_ No, they had to hunt her down and enchant her before she pricked her finger. I didn't even get any kind of warning! All right, so Grandpa might have told me some story like this at some point of my life, but I never listened to them before I got shot off down the well and I was never home after, so how could anyone reasonably expect me to know? Huh? HOW I ASK YOU?

I never even got time to react. If I was a demon and had a demon's speed and reflexes, then I probably could have saved myself. _Probably._ But with a human's lousy timing? No way. I mean, my finger was maybe a half a millimeter away from the stupid sword and closing. How could I have stopped my finger in time, even with Grandpa gabbling his warning? After all, your brain _does_ take a moment to process information, no matter how fast you are! And I wasn't fast enough. As I said, Grandpa only made it to the "go" before my finger brushed the metal. As soon as it did, there was a shock and a kind of pain that ran through me, some of it centering on my heart, some on my hand. My head felt rather like it was splitting. My back, however, got the worst share of all of it. There was a horrible feeling of _agony–_there was really no other way to describe it–that raced through me, as though the skin were literally being pulled off of me and cauterized and stretched and torn... Then (according to Grandpa) I'd collapsed, knocked out.

This is that moment when my life, already hopelessly messed up, became a true train wreck.

- - -

Everything was hazy at first, but when it all cleared I was, to my amazement, lying in a meadow. It was a lovely place too–the grass was an almost shocking shade of green, the sky was an equally vibrant blue, there were a few aspens (which had always been my favorite trees) standing here and there, their translucent leaves fluttering in a slight breeze. Tiny white star-shaped flowers dotted the green and, when I'd woken up, there had been some sort of songbird sitting very close to me and seeming to be examining me in rather grave manner; especially for a songbird, of all things. What made it all the more startling is that, when it saw that I'd finally woken up, instead of vanishing–as any self-respecting bird would when that close to a human–it actually _hopped closer_ and picked up a strand of my hair in it's beak.

I was wondering who was insane–me or the bird. If it was me, wouldn't I know? Does a crazy person know that they are crazy? I felt awfully sane for a crazy person. Of course, I suppose that hearing the story of my life from 15 on would make most anyone want to commit me, but _they_ hadn't been down the well. If all of that really was just my imagination, then I have to be a masochist.

As I was lying there on my stomach, contemplating all of these things, I heard someone laugh from behind me. That rather made me mad. After all, even if I was just imagining all of this and whoever it was laughing was only another fragment of my personality or something, they had no right. And if it was real–well, laughing at others is just plain old rude. I could never stand for it. Not for myself, not for anyone I knew. In fact, one day when Souta had been in fourth grade and had come home trying with all his might (but still rather failing) not to cry because there was a gang of kids beating up on and teasing him I had gone and threatened all of them in one of the scariest voices that I have ever heard, horror movies included.

It had stopped after that.

Anyway, laughing at someone was just... oh. And so I had sat up, swinging around with murder glinting in my eye... and then frozen.

It's like those dreams that you always have, the ones that involve you getting up and getting ready and heading off to school happily, but feeling as though there is something slightly different... And then, when you get there, you realize that you forgot your pants.

It was like that, only about a million times worse. Because, when I sat up and turned around, there was a sort of rustle, like rough silk would make when you rub two pieces together. It was more then the sound though, there was a soft drag as something would make through long grass. Like the kind that I was sitting in. And it was more then even that. There was a pull at my back–very slight, but still there–right by my shoulder blades. Slightly to the center, but right next to them. Then I started to sense something altogether new, a pressure, slight, but it felt rather like I'd suddenly grown an extra pair of arms or something. Slowly and rather apprehensively I tried to spread out whatever it was that was apparently now attached to my back. There was that silken rasp again, and then out of the corners of my eyes I saw a pair of simply enormous black wings slowly unfolding.

All thoughts of people laughing went straight out of my head as I felt the color drain from my face.

The bird hopped onto my shoulder.

To my front I saw someone moving, someone with very long black hair that the wind was blowing, but I didn't much care. _I had wings! Would you care about that much when suddenly and for no reason that you could comprehend, you had wings?_

"Kagome," whoever it was said, and at that I had to look at them. I might not have, but the voice was so warm and kind and full of a quiet sort of knowledge that I couldn't seem to _help_ it... Perhaps I shouldn't have–I'd already had more then enough shocks for the next few centuries, what with the whole "I-just-woke-up-and-I-have-wings" thing. Still, it seemed like reflex. I'd looked up, and then had my breath knocked out _again._

Because, funny as it was, I recognized this person standing in front of me.

I shouldn't have by all rights. After all, I had only ever seen her corpse–which had appeared to have become a very large piece of jerky over the years–and she wasn't even wearing the armor.

And yet, somehow, I knew her. I knew her as well as I knew myself, my very soul seemed to sing as I saw her. _Rejoice_ was the best way for me to describe the reaction that seemed to shiver through me when I saw her.

Midoriko looked very pretty, standing there in a simply elegant kimono. It was, I noted, crossed the wrong way, but I suppose that is to be expected. The crane and cherry blossoms weren't hidden, so it took me a moment to figure out what it was that was wrong. It was a simple white, and her obi and the crane were the palest gold almost imaginable.

I was instantly stuck with envy upon seeing that outfit. I'd never really been one for traditionalism, but I tell you, that kimono could have changed my mind any day... Her eyes were such a deep brown that they seemed black unless the sun hit them just right, and they were dancing with something like merriment, like there was some new and wonderful joke or delightful piece of good news that only she was privy to. It rather made me wonder what it was.

And then her eyes had grown slightly more formal and her mouth (which had been sporting a tiny smile) also grew more solemn. And she did an amazing thing. She, Midoriko, the greatest miko ever to have lived, the emblem of everything that had to do with shrine maidens, bowed to me. Me, Higurashi Kagome, 19 year old time traveler and serious candidate for the asylum!

Well, I suppose that if I needed evidence of my own insanity then this was as good as any...

Needless to say, I'd freaked out. "O-that-I- Midoriko! Please, please get up!" I was fluttering (both literally and figuratively, my wings were making these tiny nervous gestures as my hands danced from one place to another, trying to pull Midoriko up, not sure if that would be disrespectful, trying to control myself, feeling like just jumping into the air like a startled bird, and not so sure that I couldn't do that anymore...)

She, however, seemingly ignored me. Just like that. Ignored all of my nervous dashes, my tugs, my pleading... She simply bowed to me and then, slowly, of her own accord, sat back on her heels and gazed up at me, her eyes still warm and bright yet still filled with a kind of sorrow. "Please, sit down, daughter."

"Daughter?" I asked in complete shock. After all, it wasn't like we were Catholics over here...

"We are not related by blood, but by the spirit Kagome, and by the jewel. You were born with the jewel, which is my heart."

Slowly I sank down, overcome by it all. "Literally?"

"Yes. My heart and my soul. You see Kagome, they call this the Jewel of the Four souls, but that is not precisely true. It is the Jewel of the Five Souls–four souls are contained in it, true, but it was my heart and my spirit that made the container. And I bow to you, my dear, for you have begun to set me free."

"Huh?"

"You know what I mean. I created the jewel with two different functions. One was the granting of a wish and one... well, you will learn that in a moment. Still, the granting of a wish. I created the jewel so that any at all might use it for immortality, for speed, for strength, for transformation, or to solve the problems of someone else. I was hoping that someone would make an uncorrupted wish and I would be at last at peace..."

I fidgeted uncomfortably. Maybe I would have gotten on with the wish if I had known that Midoriko was still trapped in there, waiting for release... Midoriko, as though sensing what I was thinking, only smiled rather sadly. "I made a mistake hoping for that," she said sadly and I fidgeted harder. I knew it, I just knew it, it was all my fault– "You see," she continued, "there is no such thing as an unselfish wish."

I started at that. "Wha- but... but there must be! What if you make the wish not for yourself but for another?"

"Always, always at the core of a wish there is a selfish desire. No matter how noble it seems, the pursuit is always self interest. It is, after all, a wish. Wishes are selfish things. I was foolish to try to redefine that, but I was tired and I was in so much pain..."

I looked down, rather ashamed that I, I who had never really had a great trial in her life, had been complaining so bitterly when Midoriko had gone what she had gone through, and for the same thing as me. The jewel. Really, I had gotten off easy...

"There is no reason to feel sorry for me, Kagome, or as if you should have been there. The world needs you. You are the fulfilment of a prophecy. But back to the wishes. There is always a desire for gain, whatever sort, at the bottom of a wish. All of them would shatter the jewel, all of them would corrupt it. There was to be no escape that way. And that is where you come in, Higurashi Kagome, last of the guardians of the sacred Shikon no Tama." I'd started at that. _Last?_ What did she mean, _last?_

"You are the Night One, the Completion of all which must come to an end, the Rest that comes after battle, the Storm that breaks and gives peace in It's fury, the Calm at the end of all, One Who burns the more brightly for Their darkness. You are Air and you are Earth. You are Winged like the Emerald, a Guardian of the Divided Soul."

I stared. "What," I finally managed to croak. "are you even talking about?"

"You are the End and the Beginning, you are the Completion of the Cycle, you are a part of Eternity."

"I don't understand. What does any of this have to do with the jewel?"

Midoriko sighed, a long and heavy sigh, and that sorrowful look in her eyes swelled. "I'm afraid that I have cursed you child, no matter how unintentional it was on my part. After all, I did create the jewel, and only with you can it pass out of time and into rest again..."

"Wait a second. Does this have anything to do with the wings?"

Midoriko smiled faintly again. "Yes, that it does. Kagome, you know that there are four souls in the jewel–did you ever wonder _which_ four souls precisely?"

"Wait-a-sec. It's literal? You mean, the whole four-souls thing isn't just a part of the name?"

Midoriko smiled again, a fond smile full of wisdom. That smile made me feel very, very young. It is the kind of smile that you only ever get off of someone like your grandma when they are explaining universal truths, ones that you just _can't_ understand. "Yes, Kagome, it's literal."

"Good grief!" I felt like shouting, I really did. "So for all these years I've been looking for the souls of some demons who you locked away and–"

"Not youkai, Kagome. Their souls would corrupt the jewel, make it a hateful object always seeking out blood... But it is true that demon's blood as well as my heart and soul, and scraps of their spirits went into making the case. That is _why_ it can be corrupted."

"Holy... just how many souls are there in this..." I began, pushing my hand into my pocket to fish out the little pink thing and then froze. This was the last straw. I was going mad, and I would get there presently. Get the straitjacket.

It was gone.

I broke down.

"No, not again, I can't do it again, I can't go looking for it now that it's finally been found," I was muttering as the tears began to flow. This time I let them come. After all, I had walked through every level of Hell and beyond for that stupid, _stupid_ thing, and now, it was gone.

"Kagome!" Midoriko said quickly, kindly but somewhat alarmed. "Oh, don't worry so, please! You haven't lost it!"

"Yes I have," I hiccuped and began sobbing. "I lost it and I can't do that again, I just can't, and what will I tell Inuyasha–"

"You haven't lost it, Kagome, you're in it."

I stared, blank faced, the tears gradually stopping; not so much because I wasn't upset anymore as because I was back inside that little protective bubble of mine. The bird pulled lightly on my hair, which seemed to pop the bubble. And then I threw back my head and screamed.

- - -

Well, here it is. _Yet another_ fanfiction. What do you all think of this one so far? Slightly strange, yes, but I think that I am going to like it. I hope you end up liking it as much as I do...

Another thing, the chapter length. I HAVE FINALLY BROKEN 8 PAGES! OH YES! I am going to try for long chapters on this FF, but because of that the updates might be more spaced...

Review please! I would love to hear your comments!


	2. Chapter Two: Unbalanced

1**Chapter Two: Unbalanced**

_**Kagome**_

It had taken a while for me to calm down from my hysterical fit. It had all been, apparently, just too much to all happen to me at once. Quite honestly, I think that all of this happening at once would have been too much for anyone. After all, during that day I had A) _finally_ completed the Jewel, B) (probably) defeated Naraku, C) had the whole Inuyasha-doesn't-really-love-me thing going through my head, D) woken up in another world (again) E) sprouted wings F) met Midoriko and then G) after nearly losing my head from worry over the Jewel, finding out that I was, in fact, in it.

That is a lot of things to happen to one poor girl in one day. And so while, yes, in retrospect the news that I had suddenly been transplanted (or something) into the Jewel itself wasn't so bad, it was just more then I could take. And so I had done the only thing that I could seem to think of, and screamed then broken down crying. Sobbing, actually. Sobbing in great, hiccupping fits that (I'm sure) made me look rather like I was having a seizure and was somehow mentally unbalanced.

Midoriko looked very uncomfortable at it all, but like she was worried for my sake. She let me sit there and cry until it seemed like it was mostly out of my system, and then she came over and did the next shocking thing in a long line of shocking things that had happened that day.

She hugged me.

You know, I was seriously beginning to suspect that, for all our hero-worship of this petite person sitting next to me, mikos knew seriously nothing about this woman. We always looked on her as some kind of goddess, an ethereal being who was the very embodiment of everything that mikos stood for, and who had possessed an astonishing amount of purification energy. She was something that was somehow not quite human, but something more. She was strong, she was good, she was unbelievably powerful, demons feared her, either speaking her name in trembling whispers or spitting it in contemptuous challenge. But that was all that she was, all that she could be. She had to be consumed by her task, so driven and eaten up by it that finding demons and killing them was all that she thought of, that she had never known kindness or gentleness or mercy or love.

A hunter, a slayer, can never truly appreciate these things.

I wonder if Sango ever feels this? I wonder why knowing Sango–and knowing that she was as much a woman as I myself, that she laughed and loved and cried and mourned just as I did–didn't make me start thinking of this sooner. Why I never stopped to consider that Midoriko was a woman as well, and that–though she had probably lead as lonely a life as Kikyo–she would still have wished for love, and rest, and friendship...

For the first time after years of idealism, I realized that I actually knew nothing about my hero.

I'd almost shied away from the simple hug. After all, it was just so strange and confusing, to be sitting here (apparently _in_ the Shikon no Tama, which aught to be enough for anyone) with my new pair of wings and the greatest miko for centuries, the greatest miko ever to live, hugging me.

Like many things that had happened recently, I just couldn't seem to wrap my mind around it. Wings, yes, Shikon no Tama, yes, but Midoriko hugging me? She was supposed to always be so cool, so calm, so collected, so _unemotional._

Isn't life funny that way? Then again, everything else in my world seemed to be flipping today, so why not this too...

My wings shifted uncomfortably as she sat back again, her eyes clouded with grief as she looked down sorrowfully. Her voice, when she spoke, was quiet, though there was no trace of tears. "Oh, Kagome, I have cursed you, though you don't know it yet. And I am sorry."

I was still feeling dazed. "What were we even talking about?" I asked. I was feeling dead again. Man! Was I manic depressive today or what? Then, as I remembered, I gave myself a mental shake and came alive again. "It was the jewel, wasn't it? Just how many souls are there in there, anyway? Demons have souls? What fours souls are the ones locked away, if they aren't demons?"

Midoriko smiled again, though rather faintly. I was beginning to see that something like ninety percent of the time this lady spent smiling, in one form or another. This was, of course, further proof that I knew nothing about her. After all, I had always seen her as solemn and fierce. "Yes, the jewel. Untold thousands of scraps of souls make up the jewel itself, there are only four inside, and yes, demons most certainly have souls–though they, unlike humans, can function without them. As to which souls are locked away..." Midoriko went all vague, like she was looking off into the distance at something that I couldn't see.

"Yes?" I prompted.

"The elements, Kagome. Elemental souls."

Everything seemed very unreal when she said that. Maybe the fact that Midoriko was acting so… soft is a good word for it, I suppose, contributed to the dream-like aspect of everything, that floaty feeling that you get in dreams. It was—in part, at least—shock, I supposed. Still, at least I seemed calm. Kind of. Still, keeping that appearance of calm was what was important. Maybe, if I pretended that I knew what was going on hard enough, I'd be able to fool myself.

"The jewel holds the very essence of fire, earth, air and water. Or it used to. You, Kagome, instantly became the chosen one for true and not just in legends when you touched that blade, the blade that is your birthright and your rebirth all in one."

"I don't understand," I'd said helplessly. Nothing was making sense, maybe this was all a dream, a horrible dream, and I would wake up in my bed and shiver for a moment before sighing with relief and then running to the well to meet Inuyasha. But I knew that I was only deluding myself by thinking things like that. Still, sometimes the delusion is very much more nice then the real thing….

"You don't understand yet…? Very well. Kagome, you are a catalyst. Have you ever wondered why you hold Kikyo's soul?"

So we were back on this again. Why couldn't anyone—anyone at all—ever see me as just being myself, Kagome? Why did I always have to be "Kikyo's reincarnation"? I was sick of it all, ever since I had come back to the feudal era I don't honestly think that anyone really thought of me as Kagome. I was always "the reincarnation." Well, all right, I suppose that Sango and Miroku and Shippo and Kirrara saw me as Kagome on occasion, but they—as did everyone—at times saw me as the reincarnation of this beautiful, powerful, calculating priestess. Inuyasha, I'm sure, never saw me as anything but a shadow of Kikyo.

Why was Midoriko bringing that up? Was I only the fulfillment to this prophecy because Kikyo had kicked the bucket too soon? I glared at her. Would I never be anything but Kikyo's replacement?

I stood and began to pace angrily.

"Answer the question, Kagome." She was being stupid, why did she _think_ I had Kikyo's soul?

"I'm her reincarnation, right?" I finally asked bitterly. "Only a shadow of the former, only a replacement, look-alike but not as pretty, powerful magic but no control, too easily ruled by her emotions, too clumsy, not this, not that, never enough of anything…." Every comparison that anyone had ever made that I had heard was being repeated through a throat that kept on wanting to clog, but I kept on thrusting the tears back and back. This was a bitter subject for me—ever since I'd visited the feudal era there had been someone who had been me, only better, and no one had ever let either of us hear the end of it. Sometimes I thought that that was one reason that Kikyo wanted to kill me, just to stop the running chart of comparisons. Then again, why should she? She, after all, always came out on top. I could never win, not in love, not in strength, not in power, not in looks, not in that cursed calmness that allowed her to do anything necessary to protect the jewel and never regret it.

I was too weak, I'd been told repeatedly, when I had cried or thrown up or felt dizzy and had to sit down at the sight of blood and carnage or at having to kill for the first time….

"No."

That simple rebuttal was strange to my ears, a quiet refusal of all of the things I had been laying against myself.

"What?" I asked, slightly taken aback.

"No, Kagome, you are not her reincarnation."

"Wha…? But… no… I must be! Look at us, I could be her twin sister! I have the same powers; we're both good with the bow! We have the same _soul_, for crying out loud! What else can you call that?" In the back of my mind, in the part that I never really pay much heed to, I was wondering why I was protesting this so strongly. After all, I'd never liked the idea of being _anyone's_ reincarnation. I'd never liked the fact that Kikyo and I were so often compared, I'd never liked it that we were so different, and yet despite that people only saw similarities. I'd never wanted any of it, I'd longed to be proven wrong, and here I was, arguing with a person willing to do so.

There is something very, very wrong with me!

Yet still I couldn't seem to stop my treacherous mouth as it listed reason after reason, similarity after similarity. I had to be insane! And yet, Midoriko didn't have any kind of proof to back up what she said (at least not that I'd heard of) while people had been feeding me proof for their collective theory for the past five years until I'd felt that I was _drowning_ in it. It had started the first day, when I'd met Kaede, and had continued ever since.

"How can I not be her incarnation?" I finally asked tiredly. "Like I said before—all other evidence aside, I have her soul. That seems fairly definitive to me."

"Look at the differences in your eyes, your face, your hair, your height—"

"The reincarnation of a person does not have to be a clone!" I was feeling slightly irrational at that point and started waving my arms wildly, gesturing in huge movements to illustrate my point. "And look at how similar we look, despite all that!"

"Look at the differences in attitude, behavior."

I sighed. There was no arguing with this woman. Midoriko sighed right after, looking as though she shared my sentiments. I felt so tired of it all….

Midoriko sighed again. "Kagome, do you remember how I told you that demons alone can function without souls?" I thought of a few demons in my acquaintance and was tempted to grin. Yes, I could rather believe that. "That is why you have Kikyo's soul, my dear. Because humans _can't_ live without a soul."

I felt confused. "Wait—do ya mean that… I don't know… that I don't have a soul and so I sucked Kikyo's in when I was born? Something like that?"

"Something like that," Midoriko admitted, and I went blank again.

It took a little while longer for the confusion and just utter pandemonium to sink back in this time, but still it did. "I don't even have my own soul?" I cried, once that blankness had worn off.

Midoriko closed her eyes for a few moments and took a deep breath. "Yes, you have your own soul, but it has been sealed away. From a place beyond time that encompasses all of the past and present and future, it has been locked away for all time, and yet for no time at all."

I was so very, very tired. Too much had happened today, this train of thought was too complicated for me to follow. So I did the only thing left to me and asked in a world-weary voice, "Huh?" I seem to have been using that statement far more then the normal quota today, and it was getting old, but it was the only thing left to me that expressed even a fraction of what I was feeling.

Midoriko shook her head slightly after a pause. "I suppose that it is a concept too far-removed for those still trapped in the flow of time to grasp. I would never be able to explain it all, it would take a hundred hundred lifetimes, and I'm still not sure how I would do. Let's just say that it is a place removed from time, something that is two steps beyond the river of time, a place where the past and the future are as interchangeable as identical diamonds. Don't try to understand, Kagome, just accept. There is a place that is somehow neither past nor present nor future, but that is in them all, like rain running through the air. Neither is a part of the other, but they are still connected."

I thought that a pretty strange analogy, but whatever. Obviously I wasn't going to get it, so I figured that I had better just agree. "Yeaaaaa…." I said slowly, smiling faintly and nodding slowly in the way that you do when you are half humoring a person.

Obviously, Midoriko got this. She sighed. "I suppose that nothing can be done for it. You will just need to come to understand that somewhere out of time, your soul is eternally imprisoned. However, by turns, if you succeed then it will also be eternally set free. You see? The two elements are contradictory, but in this place where time has no special meaning, two such things can happen at the same time."

I was so very, very confused. Far too much was happening to me today! This just couldn't be healthy! I just sat there, feeling confused and put upon for a little while before I remembered what had brought all this on. "Wait a second, Midoriko. So you mean that because… because my soul was locked away, I got Kikyo's?"

"Yes."

"And that that is the reason that we have the same soul?"

"And possibly one of the reasons that you two are so similar, yes."

My eyes were lighting up and I was starting to smile. Not a faint little watery smile either, but a huge grin that almost seemed like it was stretching my face. My eyes, I'm sure, were shining like stars.

"That was the _only_ reason that we have the same soul?"

Her smile said it all. To me, of course, it was the best news I could possibly have had.

"I'm really not her incarnation? I'm me, Kagome, and no one else?"

Midoriko smiled, and though her smile couldn't hope to match mine for sheer, toothy brilliance, it was rather radiant. "You always have been, always will be, and never have been anyone other then your own self, Kagome," Midoriko said gently.

That single sentence had to be the single nicest thing that I'd ever heard from anyone. It was… it was music. Music to my ears. I'm sure that (at that moment, if never before in my life) I'd have cheerfully died for this priestess who was in front of me then. She had given me the greatest gift that I'd ever been given, one that no one else ever had. My own identity.

That, let me tell you, is worth something that you can't describe. I was full of this warm, glowing stuff, and I was so brimming with it that I couldn't really think. Nor did I want to. All I wanted to do was to sit there and bask.

I. Was. Kagome.

I'd been insisting this simple fact for five years, ever since I'd met Inuyasha, but after a while even my belief had been worn down. It was like everyone I met was grinding down my defiance, turning me into some kind of sheep. After all, five years of constant arguing do that to a person. It seemed like, over the years (without my even noticing it) I had been relinquishing that identity, and giving into Kikyo.

And here Midoriko came and gave it back again.

With this knowledge, I was perfectly content.

"Of course, just this fact does not explain why your soul was locked away, or what the prophecy is, or even what you are doing here." There, she just had to go and blow a hole in my boat, didn't she?

I felt something brush against me, seeming to want to push me somewhere, and when I looked up Mikoriko was suddenly looking pained. "I must tell you all this, and quickly. Your time here is running out. They become impatient."

"They?" I asked, confused once more.

"The souls."

- - -

This chapter is (sadly) only about half the size of the first one, but it felt like a good place to end it. Besides, now I can update faster. The next chapter will, however, (probably) be longer.

Actually, I don't have much of an idea on that—I guess that they will just be as long as they are going to be. Thank you everyone who reviewed! I'm so happy that everyone is liking this so much thus far!

**Reviewer Responses:**

**cheesynoodle-** Thanks for the wonderful review and the fav. As to the four/five souls... did I make that more clear in this chapter? Where I was going was there are actually four literal souls trapped within the jewel, but when Midoriko died then she used her soul and her heart to make the jewel itself, the physical form, because nothing else would be strong enough to hold the souls. Thus the jewel is actually comprised of five _whole_ souls and so... yea. This is also the reason that Midoriko is sticking around–she can't take off until the jewel is purified, aka, her soul released from its current physical limitations.

**Nomina-** Thank you. And I always use spellcheck (people who don't tend to drive me insane, so I think I see where you're coming from)

**kitsune ninja-** Well, I hope that the latest chapter met with expectations.

**Saint Charles-** Thanks! BTW- congrads on knowing all of that saying, not many people do.

**Isisoftheunderground-** Thank you! I hope that this didn't constitue as "horribly long," I did try!


	3. Chapter Three: Oh, What Trials

**Chapter Three: Oh, What Trials  
**_**Kagome**_

When I'd crashed back to my own plane of existence, apparently some hours later (at least, if the moon and stars outside were any indication) I'd felt like I'd been hit by a wrecking ball. Not so much in that it hurt a lot, more in the fact that it had felt like I'd been slammed so very hard into my own world. I guess that Midoriko hadn't been kidding. She had, after all, as she explained about the souls and everything else, told me that they were growing more impatient and wouldn't wait forever.

Apparently, just as she had finished telling me what all of it was, they had lost all semblance of patience. Or politeness, for that matter.

My alarm clock was dully glowing a rather sickly lime-green next to my head, showing the current time. 10:46. Boy, I really had been out of it for a long time. I felt groggy, and my chest hurt a bit, seeming to pulse with my heartbeats almost—but then, Midoriko had warned me about that too. I suppose that it didn't hurt—not really, but it felt funny. Like when something's gone numb, almost, only not the pins-and-needles type of numb. Just the kind of numb where what you can feel feels a bit detached and uniform, like if you burn yourself and it stops hurting.

I didn't stay awake for any more than this. I'd been exhausted by everything that I'd gone through this day, and my time in the jewel? Yea, it didn't rest me, and I was actually _more_ exhausted than I had been previously.

To put it bluntly, I zonked.

I stayed awake long enough to notice my position, the fact that my wings were (sadly, yes) still there, and the time on my alarm clock before I was out cold. I would be willing to swear on anything that you like that I didn't move that night, I was too tired.

I suppose that, all things considered, I shouldn't have been surprised at my dream, but I was (a bit). I mean, I'd been thinking of these things when I fell asleep, and that aught to have been an indicator, but I really was not prepared. Still, it wasn't really a dream that I had that night, more of a memory. Strange that it had been so recent, but it had been life changing. Like I said, it's not surprising that I dreamt of my conversation with Midoriko, for all that it had only taken place a few minutes ago. It was rather difficult to think of anything else.

- - -

_I felt something brush against me, seeming to want to push me somewhere, and when I looked up Mikoriko was suddenly looking pained. "I must tell you all this, and quickly. Your time here is running out. They become impatient."_

"_They?" I asked, confused once more._

"_The souls."_

_I'd been (unsurprisingly) confused. "Ok," I'd said, "we mentioned this before, but could you please just backtrack a little and explain it completely? I really still don't have much of an idea as to what is going on around here, and the more that I hear, the more I want to. It seems important."_

"_It is important," Midoriko said, "very important. And it all ties back to the prophecy, the one that I mentioned earlier. That is the reason that your own soul was locked away, Kagome, so that you could fulfill it. And the moment that you touched the sword, you began to. You bound yourself into fate. You see, as I said earlier, there are only four whole souls contained in the jewel, but they are amazingly powerful. It is because they are elemental souls. The purest forms of Air, Earth, Fire, and Water are contained in the jewel." She smiled slightly, apparently at my expression (which somewhat resembled a fish, huge eyes and a mouth that was slowly opening and closing. Sigh. And this is the picture I give my all-time hero.) "Why did you think it was so powerful? Anything less and it would be a powerful magical trinket, but it would not have the power to rule lives and change countries."_

"_Wait," I croaked (all moisture in my mouth and throat seeming to have evaporated), "what was that prophecy again?"_

_Midoriko looked at me for a moment, her head slightly cocked, like a bird. "You have never heard the whole of it. I only told you the portions referring to you. Would you like to hear it all?"_

"_Yes," I said in that croaky voice._

_She closed her eyes for a moment, as though remembering something that was long ago, or listening to something far away, and then began._

"_Two shall come when four are weary, and so shall be divided. They who come shall be whole, for they shall be separate, and yet only together can they be as they are. One shall be as Air and Earth, the Night One, the Completion of all which must come to an end, the Rest that comes after battle, the Storm that breaks and gives peace and peace in It's fury, the Calm at the end of all, One Who burns more brightly for Their darkness. They shall be winged like the Emerald._

"_The other shall be Water and Fire, they shall be the Star, the Snowfall, the Sunrise, the Beginning that brings both pain and immeasurable joy, the Battle, the Flame, the Lightning, Swift Fire, the Ice, the Frost. They shall be One Who had fallen and risen again, and One Who brings both life and death. They are calm and they are fury. And they, together, are the Guardians of the Divided Souls, parts of Eternity. For only through them can Eternity connect."_

_I stared, mystified. "And that means… what, exactly?"_

"_Kagome, you were born without a soul so that you could be a vessel for the souls of the jewel, and in more ways then one. When they were in the jewel, when I was containing them, your capacity for soul had to be large enough to be able to contain them. This is why the jewel was in you, because of the prophecy. However, you do have Kikyo's soul. This is so that you can give it back. Because, Kagome, you will now have the elemental souls of Air and of Earth instead, and they are too large for another. Carrying two souls, especially such as these, is a strain, it would be impossible to carry three. Given time, it will destroy you. That is a part of another prophecy—'Three there will be when two are needed, and all will fail in flame if the third is not returned to the earth that is it's true home.' "_

_Right then, I thought to myself. Midoriko smiled. "And…" I asked hesitantly, "what does the rest of it mean?"_

"_You and another, Kagome (I know not who) are fated to bring about the end of the jewel, by accomplishing a task so great that the very threads of time are torn and reconnected. If you do, then your true souls will be released—indeed, it will be as if they were never bound—and the elements will be free to rest. You'll be relatively normal after." She looked at me seriously for a moment. "Or as normal as you will ever be able to be. You will never lead a life like any other. You are woven into fate, Kagome, woven into time."_

"_Huh?" I asked intelligently._

"_Everything affects everything else, no matter how small the disturbance—" she began._

"_The Chaos Theory in action," I muttered under my breath before turning my attention back to her._

"—_everyone is tangled in stands of destiny. No matter how small the action, they wrap themselves in strands of time and fate, and then every action that they take has greater consequences. And this is how most people are. Most are tangled in fate, affecting change without truly knowing the extent. Some, however, are more then tangled. They are woven into fate and destiny at a pivotal point, and every one of their actions has amazingly far-reaching results. Imagine a spider's web. If you touch one of the threads on the outside, then only that thread and a few connecting are vibrated. If you touch the center, then everything shifts. So it is with those woven in destiny. And great vibrations from them are just everyday actions and decisions, not the problem that such are truly for. You see, every such person has a task that can change the fates of worlds."_

"_Wait-a-sec," I said hurriedly, "I'm nothing that special! I'm just a normal girl who's worried about Algebra and who isn't currently passing half my classes because—"_

"_You're not there," Midoriko finished for me. "Kagome, how many people to you know that can move on the timeslide?"_

_I suddenly shut up and began twiddling my thumbs._

"_How many people in history, do you suppose, have affected as great a change as you have by doing nothing more special then living your everyday life? You are moving two generations, changing everyone that you come in contact with. You are like a pebble dropped into a pond—from anywhere you touch, ripples spread and affect everything."_

_Ok, time for a subject change. "And what was that about me being supposed to return Kikyo's soul?"_

"_Just as I said. As I said before, having three souls struggling for power within you would destroy your sanity. It would be like trying to hold a burning coal in a tissue after a while, for the longer they battle, the fiercer they become. You need to return Kikyo's soul to her."_

_Midoriko seemed to think for a moment after saying this. "And another thing," she said, "the sword is your birthright. Remember that, and never let anyone take it from you."_

"_Right then," I blinked, "is that all?"_

_Midoriko smiled again, that small, almost secretive smile that she wore so often. "Just about. One thing remains—try to get used to your new powers quickly. And try to control your temper."_

_What was **that** about? I wondered, and was opening my mouth to ask what she meant when suddenly Midoriko's eyes had flown wide and I had felt something slam into me, pushing me backwards like a leaf in a high wind._

- - -

I woke up at home, in bed, just as I had before. Bit of a different circumstance, I suppose, but it was still at the same place. I closed my eyes to the pale false dawn that was creeping across the sky outside and just leaned back. It had been such a vivid dream that reality shouldn't, it seemed, seem quite real any more. The dream—and it had to have all just been a dream—was clear and crisp and hovering at the edge of my mind where it shone like diamonds in the sun. My bedroom—pink, leftover from a younger age when my life's ambition was to be a Disney princess—seemed almost washed-out compared to it.

I was also, I realized a few seconds later, sleeping on my stomach, which was unusual for me. I'd probably turned over in my sleep, but it had never happened before.

Then I realized that I still had wings.

Of course, that made sense then. Of course I'd be lying this way. And here I was still hoping that I'd dreamed it all. But then I knew that I hadn't.

Yesterday… it seemed so trivial in comparison to all of this. Yes, Inuyasha hadn't come running after me, but he hadn't many times before as well. And worrying about that yesterday when all of this had just come crashing down seemed, well, silly.

Reality had just been warped.

For the second time.

I sighed. Couldn't it have happened to someone _else?_ Being woven or tangled or whatever in fate seemed to me like a lousy bargain; there was, as far as I could see, a great deal of trouble and not one perk. All it was was life throwing one curve after another at you when all that you are doing is _dreaming_ of something straight! Why is my path constantly twisting back and forward and around on itself?

My alarm started beeping, a sickly thrumming noise, and I was half tempted to smash it into smithereens and half tempted to start laughing hysterically. It was just so ordinary, that's all. An alarm going off in contrast with all of the other things that had been happening to me seemed positively bizarre in its normality. It also sort of brought it home to me—I was awake, this was really happening to me. And then I also wanted to cry.

Laughing and crying both in brittle, hiccupping sobs, I buried my head in my pillow and just let the stupid alarm ring. It was one of the newer ones, the ones with the automatic timers, so eventually it shut itself off. I'm not sure when that was. It was before I'd managed to calm myself down—when I lifted my face from the pillow it had stopped. I went onto autopilot then, getting up and heading for the bathroom to brush my teeth just because I couldn't think of anything else to do or any reason why not to. I actually wasn't thinking much of anything—I'd been doing altogether too much thinking in the past 24 hours anyway, and needed a rest from it.

Nothing much did change either—getting through the door was more trouble then it normally was (because of the wings and all) but I figured it out soon enough and went about my normal routine as I usually did (though the shower _was_ difficult to figure out, and in the end a lot more of the bathroom got wet then was normal). It all went normal, I should say, until I looked into the mirror. Then I almost screamed.

Oh, I knew that I'd look different of course, (having huge black wings, for example, sticking out of my back—which, besides looking weird, made my shirt look odd as well), but I'd had no idea just _how_ abnormal I'd look.

My eyes, for example (which have always been _easily_ my best feature—they are larger then is normal, but in a good way, and were a stunning cobalt blue that was almost _unheard_ of)—they had changed. Now they were blue only in a ring around my pupil, and the rest of my eye was a deep, rich, forest green shot with a color that looked like old gold. I was paler then I had been before, and my hair was somehow different. It had always been blue-black, but now it was almost more of a black-blue—like, instead of black with a bluish shine, it looked like it was a blue so dark that you couldn't tell that it was blue except when the light hit it. Oh, except for the tips. The tips were a blue so pale that it was almost white, but they faded quickly into my "normal" hair.

Normal. Hah. To think that I should call anything in my life normal.

Anyway, it was actually a rather pretty affect, but _it wasn't me._ Yes, that image had my face—sort of—but it didn't have my eyes or my hair or my skin (I was paler then normal) or anything like that. The image looked lighter too—like the person had the body of a dancer or a gymnast, something like that. I looked thinner, and somehow almost like I was transparent. Only I wasn't, of course, but you got that affect from how the light reflected off of me—like not quite all of it did. In fact, practically the only similarities between us were our general forms and the fact that we both had wings—big, bluey-black wings with very, very pale blue tips to the pinfeathers.

Just… like… my… hair…. _More_ like my hair, to tell the truth, then they had any right to be, as I found when I closely examined my hair that it now had _feathers_ in it. FEATHERS! Yes, bluey-black feathers with shockingly pale tips growing at the nape of my neck.

I sank to the ground with my back to the wall and hid my face with a hand. Why was nothing ever simple, or easy? Why couldn't I have had _normal_ problems, like what I would wear on my next date or how to do problem 12a in math? _Why was the world so complicated, and, more importantly, why did I always seem to get caught in said complications?_

I didn't cry (I'd certainly done enough of that recently, besides which my natural cheerfulness kept on trying to take over again), but I did sit still for a very long time. All of a sudden, I just felt monumentally tired, like the world had suddenly been dropped on my shoulders. In a way, I suppose, it had. Again. Of course me, no one else was ever handy for the universe in general to foist its problems off on. Couldn't I ever rest, though? If I managed to survive completing this, would I finally get to rest? I smiled humorlessly, sarcastically, at that thought. What, me, rest? Why never! Well, forget about it. I would just sit there on the bathroom floor, and not do any more of the stupid assignments that fate has been handing out. _I have to move eventually,_ I finally told myself sternly, and then I sighed and stood up.

The mirror was right in front of me, so as soon as I got to that height the face that was me but not me was staring back, those piercing green eyes seeming to hold as many secrets as the sea, or an ancient forest—and the kind that they had back in the Feudal Era, the kind that whole civilizations could conceivably get lost in, not the pathetic, sad, massacred woods of today.

I don't know myself anymore—I'm not even really sure that I know who I am, _what_ I am. How am I ever to do anything?

- - -

Right finally the next chapter. hkestal, here it is, hope you enjoyed. It took longer then usual because I have been out of town a whole lot recently, but whatever. Really, I wanted it to be a bit longer, but couldn't figure out just how to work the next part while staying in character, and so (since I figured that I owed you anyway) I updated. I hope you like it.

And, just for the record, I don't have any problems with Kagome's origional character design--I actually quite like it, and I'm not changing her because of that. I'm doing it partially because it's kind of necessary, and partailly because it's so much more fun that way... -wink- You'll see what I mean in a bit...

Happy days!

**Reviewer Responses:**

**hkestal-** I updated, I updated, don't hurt me! Oh, anda bit of advice from a fellow rabid fan--if you kill the author, you can't make them update. Besides (gulp) that would be... painful. A lot. Yea.

**JediK1-** Thank you! That was so... cool! It's spicy! My writing is spicy! (glitter, hearts, stars)

**Isisoftheunderground-** Well, I hope that this is really good. As far as I can see, I waited too long for such a short(ish) update for it to have many other redeming graces. I like it, at least.


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